The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of several independent variables in predicting the perception of television's content as real. The relationship between the perception of television violence as real and agressive predispositions of young viewers was analyzed. Two hundred seventy-three Mexican children in the third and sixth grades in Mexico City were administered questionnaires testing hypotheses with respect to 11 independent variables as predictors of the perception of reality of television: real life experience with television content, socioeconomic status, grade in school, age, sex, grade point average, the use of television for relaxation, learning and companionship, exposure, and the influence of television increased with the use of television for learning and companionship, with general TV exposure, and with the influence of others; as the referent for television became more abstract, the children tended to perceive television as more realistic; and the perception of the reality of television violence did not correlate consistently with two different measures of aggressive predisposition. (Author/TS)